


Prometheus//Chainbreaker

by Chi-chi-chimaera (gestalt1)



Series: Transformers Fanfiction [5]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Alternate Universe, Empurata, Extrapolation from canon levels of dystopia, M/M, Rape/Non-con Elements, Social Justice, Spark Sexual Interfacing, Transformers Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing, caste system
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-06-29 18:43:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19836280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gestalt1/pseuds/Chi-chi-chimaera
Summary: Middle-caste mech Orion Pax has what would seem to be a nice, quiet life as a dockyard worker, up until he gets involved in a police investigation into stolen goods. Now important mechs are interested in him, and in no mood for objections like 'justice' and 'fair play'. The price of resistance is steep.Sentenced to the ultimate punishment of Empurata, Orion learns what life is like for those who have nothing. His meeting with the charismatic miner turned gladiator Megatron is almost assured.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a concept I've been thinking about for a while. I'm not sure how regularly it will be updated yet, and it is going to be a long fic, but it is something I'm going to keep working on for a while. 
> 
> I'm using these in terms of time:  
> Astrosecond - about 0.25 seconds  
> Klik - 1.2 minutes  
> Breem - 8.3 minutes  
> Cycle - 1.25 hours  
> Megacycle - 93 hours  
> Decacycle - 3 weeks  
> Stellar cycle - 7.5 months  
> Deci-vorn - 8.3 years  
> Vorn - 83 years

_ “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature,  _

_ the heart of a heartless world,  _

_ just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation.” _

_ “Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.” _

\----

Orion is sedated for the procedure, but he is not in stasis. The outcome of the operation is his punishment, but the justice of the Senate for dissidents is harsh indeed. There will be pain, and he is meant to feel it. 

_ But I’m not… _ Orion thinks to himself, processor sluggish under the weight of hostile lines of code that keep him still, quiescent.  _ I never… I don’t deserve this. There’s been a mistake. A terrible mistake.  _

Surely they won’t go through with this. Surely there will be some last breem reprieve, a messenger bursting through the doors of the med-bay with a pad containing a pardon from the Chief Justice himself… He continues to believe this until the first energon scalpel descends and carves his servo from his wrist. 

The agony is exquisite. Orion cannot move, all his actuators locked down by the code in his systems, but the Senate’s medics have done nothing to prevent him from feeling pain. It is bad enough as they seperate the plating along both forearms, isolate the bundles of neural cabling and energon lines to tie off, sever them and reattach to crude replacements. When they come to work on his helm, it is much, much worse. 

Orion is not able to truly listen or to process the data of the world around him, but his sensory suite is sensitive and still recording. 

“These audial fins… they seem to be wired very tight to his processor.”

“They aren’t important. Focus on the faceplates and leave them be.”

“What about…”

It is cut off there. They have begun on his optics and he is lost in utter horror. 

\----

No. Go back. This is not the beginning. 

That came some time ago. 

\----

There is pressure all around him. Up until now it has been comforting; all of a sudden it is too tight, constricting. He wriggles, moving at the impulse of a strange new instinct. He turns upwards, the unfamiliar concept of ‘direction’, and struggles towards the light. The close embrace of his surroundings crumble away and the world opens up around him. It is very bright here, and very vast. Again instinct prompts him - he activates circuitry that has only recently formed and creels a loud, wailing cry up to the distant stars. His optics are smudged and uncalibrated. He cannot see the river of points that marks the galaxy’s arm far above, but he is still, somehow, aware of them. 

Cybertron lost its sun far eons ago, yet its children still know to seek the light. 

The ground he is lying on vibrates. Something approaches. He rolls - dorsal, ventral, dorsal - and then there is a voice. It is a gentle croon, automatically soothing. He twists to stare up at it, lenses whirring in, out, in. Focusing. The processor first learns from the stimuli of its environment, building upon the basal blocks of programming buried in the little-understood drives of protometal. 

“Hello there little bitlet,” the voice says. Solid, careful metal fastens around him and scoops him up. He flails as he is carried into the air. Again, there is calibration. New sensations are categorised, compared. At this stage, all data is good data. He is turned in the grasp, this way and that.

“What a healthy young sparkling you are,” the voice marvels. “Let’s get a look at you - haven’t you been growing nicely!”

He beeps and wriggles, pleased. He has categorised and learned the tone of ‘praise’. 

“Let’s get you to the creche then,” the voice says. “You’re going to make the best friends of your functioning there, you know. Off we go!”

He is moving now, carried along by the large shape and frame that is making the voice. It is high up, and he can see far. There is a field of glowing light spread out before them which mirrors the lights far above. He has come from here, and now, he is going somewhere else. There will be more things to learn there, and this is good. 

\----

The world is very bright and very loud. It disorientates him and he stumbles as he walks forward. Something hits him from the side and shoves him back into place in the moving line of shapes and forms, all the same. He is… in a frame. He has a body. It is the first thing he remembers having. Parts of him twitch and move as he settles in, feeling his way around what and who he is. He feels solid. He feels strong. This may be subjective. He has nothing to measure himself against except the other shapes in front of him and behind him, and he can see only minor differences laid upon the same basic form. 

“Halt!” The call comes from a new shape. His processor adjusts rapidly. Forms become frames become individuals. Persons such as himself. This one is small - smaller. He marches up along the line of them. He seems sure and steady and focused. He, at least, knows what he is doing. 

“Pay attention you lot,” he says, turning to face them. “I know you’re confused and don’t know what’s going on right now but frankly no-one cares. You’ll find things out when it’s time for you to find them out. Right now is quality control.” 

He wants to ask what is meant by this, but even a processor as new and fresh as his can tell better. Were they not just told that answers would come in due course? He obeys the instructions of this other one as he tells them to move, to stretch, to twist and flex in what appears to be either calibration or testing of their physical properties. Whatever it is meant to achieve, there is an honest pleasure to it. His spark has settled into his frame and it feels… right. 

One of the people who looks like him moves differently. He jerks, and spasms, and it strikes a discordant note within him. He knows nothing, yet he knows that this is wrong. 

“Smelt that one,” the smaller one says. There is no change to the tone or nature of his voice. Others come from the shadows - he had not seen them before this moment. The one who is not right is removed. “Waste of good parts,” the small one says, quiet, undirected. “Spark might be salvageable for another go though.” His attention returns to the line, to the people who are correct. “Keep moving,” he instructs, and waves them forwards. 

As he passes, he, new-made, nameless, pauses. “Pardon,” he asks, daring and uncertain of his daring. “What am I called?” 

The small one looks at him. If he has optics, they are hidden behind a flat sheet of something, yet there is a sense of attention and of being watched more closely than before. “You’re a curious one,” he says. “You shouldn’t be curious.”

“I am sorry.”

The small one raises his shoulders and drops them again. The meaning of this is not known. “What does it hurt? You’re unit D-16, from the 400th imprint of the heavy-duty labour frame type twelve. Maybe someone will care enough about you at some point to give you a real name, but I fragging doubt it.”

“Thank you,” D-16 says, meaning this with great conviction, and continues to move.

\----

The creche is very exciting. There is a great deal of data here, and the sparkling soaks up every bit of it. The environment is full of shapes and colours, different elements and materials, puzzles and games. Media is shown to him at regular intervals on a viewscreen. As he was promised he meets others like himself, small squeaking blobs of protometal and rudimentary components, capable of extruding basic limbs when needed but for the most part remaining as protective cylinders. There are caretakers; large, dense forms that weave warmth and caring into their fields. This too is an opportunity for learning. There is electromagnetic energy dancing in the air around his body, and the sparkling experiments, manipulating it, controlling it. 

Like his crechemates, he is given a name. Orion, for the stars that were above him at the time of his extrusion, and Pax for the time of peace this creche-clutch was born into. 

Orion’s sense of time passing becomes concrete as his internal chronometer calibrates with the regularity of Cybertron’s days and the rhythm of the creche. The caretakers start to present them with new resources, not merely the steady drip of bright, processed energon through feeding tubes. Orion learns the names as they are introduced, although his command of language glyphs is still more theoretical than practical. Iron, steel, and copper dust to be absorbed into his protometal, vials of mercury tipped into his intake, sweet beryllium, chalky calcium and magnesium, scraps of titanium, chromium and manganese. Consumed they satisfy some deep craving he cannot quantify. 

Orion’s soft sparkling body begins to change, following orders and instructions encoded in the wavelengths of his spark. Armour builds up on his dermis, layering in plates that bond together and thicken. Hydraulics and circuitry push out of delicate protometal and weave their way into his developing frame. He grows limbs that do not retract, his optics become more complex, he builds up the beginnings of a helm and audial prongs. His crechemates are changing too. They no longer appear all alike save the colour of their optics in blues and yellows and purples. 

Speech develops. He plays with glyphs, building ever more complex patterns, toying with vibration and volume and meaning, which can shift with inflection, tone and other small alterations. It is  _ fun _ to have this freedom to experiment and to do so with his crechemates who enjoy the game of language equally well. The caretakers watch it all with indulgence. Orion grasps that they have seen this all before, and will see it again many times in their functioning. 

As his processor develops, learning becomes about more than simple trial and error. There are lessons, lectures, vids, sometimes small data downloads offered up on solid drives for him to absorb into his protometal, take apart and integrate at his own pace. It is still all so good. There is nothing unpleasant here, not in the creche. 

But the development stage, like all things, cannot last. 

\----

After ‘quality control’, as the small one had named it, D-16 walks with the others that look like him into a new room. His sensory suite scans for new data, for information about his surroundings to integrate into his understanding of the world. Everything is fresh to him. There is a sense of honest wonder to it, and there is much to catch his interest in here. Looping cables hang from banks of rectangular blocks, each flickering with glowing diodes. Other beings, in smaller frames similar to the one who guides them around, stand close by each block as though waiting for their entry. D-16 is ushered over to one of these machines by the small one, but he needs no incentive to go, keen as he is to examine it and perhaps work out its function. 

He has little from which to extrapolate. 

“Face towards the centre of the room and stay still,” the small one tells them. D-16 does as he is told, obedient. He has no reason not to obey. 

“Kneel down,” the new being to his right says. D-16 does so and looks this one over - his plating is patterned and tinted differently to any of those he has seen so far, but he has no context to attach any kind of meaning to that. D-16 compares the thickness of his frame to that of the other, noting how much larger he is. Does this have meaning? 

The mech reaches behind D-16 and he feels the touch on the back of his neck, below the edge of his helm. The other moves with confidence; it is clear he knows what he is doing. So close as this, he can feel that there is some kind of electromagnetic energy coming from around the small one, and is then abruptly aware that he is emitting a similar energy of his own. Curious. There is a click, and D-16 feels some of his plating shift aside, a wave of sensation as cold air brushes across fresh new components which have never before been exposed. 

He shivers. “Stay  _ still _ ,” the mech tells him irritably. He leans away, reaching for something. 

There is an intrusion, something pressing in to D-16 at the place where his plating no longer is. He stiffens, uncertain if this is danger - something in him does not like it - but then he is… full. There is data, so  _ much _ data. A stream of it pours from the connection at the back of his neck, streaming through his processor, seeking out his databanks and slotting into them in carefully organised files and folders and… 

Time, presumably, passes. Before, his chronometer was not active. Afterwards, it is. 

{Full data integration complete.}

D-16 resets his optics, looking at the place he is in all afresh. He knows things he did not know before. He  _ understands _ what it is he sees. 

“Smooth information download,” the middle-caste mech next to him says, reading something off from a pad that is spliced into D-16’s medical port alongside the data transfer cable. “The integration matrix is proceeding well. There will be some initial disorientation, but that should settle within the first couple of cycles.” 

“Thank you,” D-16 says, then adds, “sir,” as the new data supplies the correct term of address. 

With a soft click, the data cable is pulled free of his port. “Stand, and report to the loading bay,” the technician says, pointing to a door on the far side of the room. D-16 does so, joining his fellow low-caste mechs. He looks at them with new optics, at simple factory-grey paint splashed with yellow and black hazard striping, at servos made for brute force and heavy labour. They have been constructed, he now understands, to serve a purpose. 

On the other side of the door is an even bigger room. A hanger, with a hatch high above designed to iris open, and an off-world transport craft waiting for them. There is another low-caste mech waiting for them, talking to one of the factory technicians. His voice does not quite travel, even though D-16 tries to turn up the gain on his audials. There is an insignia emblazoned on the side of the shuttlecraft. Tetracorp Mining. He must assume it is their new employer. 

The data he has been given tells him about his frame, his systems, his anatomy and capabilities. It tells him his place in the world, the form of the society he has been sparked into, ways to behave and what he very much should not do. It even, he now sees with closer examination, contains some basic information about the duties of a miner. It does not tell him what Tetracorp Mining is, or where he is being sent. 

Even so, if it allows him to fulfil his function, to be useful and worthy, it is surely where he is meant to be. 

\---- 

From the time of leaving the factory to the time of arriving at his destination, D-16 never sees the sky. He knows now that it is something that exists, knows that there is a world out there called Cybertron teeming with mechs of all shapes and sizes and forms, high and middle and low caste, that there are colonies, planets and systems which belong to their people and have done since a time called the Golden Age (though he has been given little concerning their history). Knowing is not the same as experiencing. 

The travel is long, skipping through warped space. To save on energon, he and his fellows are placed into medical stasis, stacked in berths inside the hold only to wake when the journey is over. Once they have docked and he has pushed aside the disorientation of stasis D-16 files out of the ship with the other miners to find a hanger not so different from the one he left. Had it not been for the experience of travelling, he could almost think they had never gone anywhere at all. 

Outside of the hanger the difference becomes swiftly apparent. They are in low tunnels carved from stone and roaring with the noise of machinery. Tanks and barrels full of processed energon are stacked awaiting shipment at the end of long processing lines that rattle and thump and emit occasional bursts of short-lived radiation. Massive trolleys full of energon crystals emerge from elevators, brought up from the true mine below. 

Low-caste mechs with hauler frames look up to see the new arrivals, curiosity evident in their optics, but a mech who D-16’s data now tags as ‘overseer’ pulls an electrowhip from his side and cracks it against the floor in a trail of sparks. They look away again quickly. 

“This is the new shipment?” The voice has a new accent, a new way of glossing language glyphs. The mech who has spoken is shiny and bright despite the dust that scatters the floor and hangs in the air. He is small, like the technicians, but sleek and carefully built.  _ High caste _ , his processor supplies. D-16 looks down at the floor. He is not to come to the attention of high-caste mechs, according to the data download. He is to be silent, respectful, and if at all possible, invisible. 

“Straight off the factory floor, Director,” the technician who had unloaded them replies. “Might I add sir, how much we appreciate having your direct attention - these visits of yours are always appreciated by the miners and the overseers alike.”

D-16 feels the tickle of a scan over his field. 

“They seem adequate,” the Director says. “They should last long enough to be profitable, at any rate, although Primus knows the shareholders will whine about expenses and their margins yet again.”

“They’ll work their purchase-debt off in a few vorns if they know what’s good for them.”

D-16 takes a moment to think about that term, ‘purchase-debt’. He finds it in the data soon enough. Apparently the creation of new Cybertronian life, or at least that subset of it which is ‘cold-constructed’ is not cheap. The price for the materials that went into him is his own responsibility to pay back, although the custom appears to be that this debt is sold from the factory to the corporation that requested he and his batch-mates be built. So he has to work for them until that debt is paid. 

The logic of it is easy to follow. The data download is clear. It is the way that things work, for him if not for the forged. It is by the will of Primus that the forged come into being, not the will of a company. 

“Alright, this way,” the technician shouts, his conversation with the Director over. They head towards the lifts, and down. 

\----

D-16 is assigned to third shift in the twelfth level, the deepest level of the mine thus excavated. Although his internal chronometer is out of sync with the time the mine is working on, he is shoved into the shaft straight away to find his way in the dark. His optics project a soft yellow glow onto the rough-carved stone walls and the trolley rails that run along the floor. He follows them towards the distant sound of noise. The shafts are laid out in a grid but it is not as regular an arrangement as that would imply. The grid has followed the seams of energon crystals where they lead and omitted the areas where they are absent, leading to a sense of stuttering, of an element of chaos. His navigation however is guided by the knowledge that has been poured into his databanks, and he finds his way to his destination before more than a few breems have passed.

Dark shapes lit with their own glows - optics and fields and the heat of the working frames themselves - emerge as he reaches the active site. Those optics turn to look towards him as he approaches, but the work itself does not cease. No-one speaks. D-16 hovers, uncertain. His alt is a mining vehicle and he can imagine how it would carve new tunnels through the rock, but there is no space to transform here in the tight passage, and none of the other miners are in their alts besides. He has no integrated mining equipment and has not yet been issued with any. 

The other miners have drills and powered picks. They chip aside stone in layers that fall at their pedes looking for the thin veins of crystal that will be processed into energon while one or two of their number trots back and forth to take the waste away. The noise of this is immense, an endless vibrating roar that starts to force his audial sensors into shut-down. 

D-16 is distracted, he does not notice the overseer approaching. A fist knocks lightly on the plating of his arm, and he turns to look, startling at the sight of the smaller mech there. Blue optics glare up at him, and his internal comm pings with a short-distance signal. 

{Well?} the overseer asks. {What are you waiting for, an invitation?}

{I’m new to this mine} D-16 explains, spreading his servos in an apologetic gesture. {I don’t have…}

The overseer vents exhaust, a sudden rush of heat against plating in this place that is already very warm. He rolls his optics and leads D-16 over to the side of the shaft and presses a drill into his servos. {There. Now work, or you’ll end the day more in debt than you began.}

The statement is a curious one, but D-16 does not feel that the overseer is likely to offer him any explanation. He is not here to ask questions. He is here to work. Better to begin - there will be time to learn more when his shift is over. 

\----

The miners do not talk to each other during their shift, not even on comms. The work is hard, stretching even D-16’s factory-fresh hydraulics and cables. At the end of the half-megacycle it seems that every strut inside his frame aches. The overseer gives a piercing whistle when they are to stop, and they take it in turns to push the heavy trolley laden with crystals back through the tunnel to the lift. The overseer takes it up with two chosen mechs to move it the last bit of the way, and the mechs left below relax once he is gone. 

“Welcome to the third moon of Thales,” one of them says, holding a servo out to D-16 who takes it carefully and shakes it, hoping he is carrying out the greeting protocol appropriately. 

“Is that where we are then?” he asks. “I didn’t get a chance to see any of it on the way in.”

The mech shrugs. “There’s a bit of a settlement up on the surface,” he says. “Mostly full of things to keep the overseers occupied, but we get a little free time every stellar cycle to go up and relax. You can let go now,” he adds, and grins as D-16 lets his servo drop, flustered. There isn’t anything mocking about his expression or his field though. “You really are fresh off the assembly line.”

“I can’t deny it,” D-16 replies. Most of the other miners are not paying him a great deal of attention. They have started to wander off, and D-16 wonders if the two of them should be following. 

“What’s your name?” the mech asks. 

“My designation is D-16. I don’t have a… name.”

He gives D-16 an assessing look up and down. “Generally down here we come up with our own names, or our friends help us out with finding one that fits. Not sure about you yet, but I’m sure we’ll figure one before too long. I’m Terminus. I’m down a bunk-mate at the moment, so you can recharge in my room. Save you spending a few cycles trying to find a free space on your own.”

“Thank you. That’s… very kind of you.”

“Someone has to teach you new sparks how to stay out of trouble,” Terminus says. He does not look like he is either joking, or making light of it. 

D-16 pauses. “Is trouble something I’m likely to fall into?”

Terminus vents. “Let’s talk about it over our end-shift ration.”

\----

Orion fidgets nervously outside the crechemaster’s office, waiting to be called in to see the taxonomist. He is trying to keep his field calm as he has been taught, but under the circumstances it isn’t easy. He is neither the first not last of his crechemates to be invited into this office over the past deca-cycle, and his processor has been speculating wildly about the possible outcome. This isn’t something he knows a lot about - he has little data to work with.

His creche-group is all middle-caste mechs, but their alt modes have diverged during their development. They have two racers, a jet, one light vehicle, and half-a-dozen utility frames - Orion is one of them. According to the talents they have demonstrated over the vorn of their development, and their place in the Great Cybertronian Taxonomy, the taxonomist will issue them with guidelines on the jobs that they may apply for. Bitstream has been accepted as a drone technician, and Afterburner is going to be a courier. Everyone else has been talking about their own hopes and little else for half a stellar-cycle, but Orion isn’t sure what his own ambitions are. 

“You may enter now,” sleek, high-caste Sectorus says, opening the door. The crechemaster returns to his seat behind the desk, picking up his pad as though distracted by paperwork and hardly bothering to pay attention. Orion spots that he is not scrolling through the documents at the right pace for that though, so he  _ is _ listening. 

“Come here, youngling,” the taxonomist tells him. 

Orion takes the seat that has been left for him nervously. The taxonomist is a middle-caste mech with some kind of optical alt, science class no doubt. His field is calm and controlled, held mere nanometers above his plating as politeness dictates. He watches Orion with careful optics, saying nothing for at least a dozen astroseconds. 

“You have developed a finely tuned sensory suite,” the taxonomist notes. “You have a greater than average number of data connectors, and your teacher reports you have a fine processor for puzzles and problems. That gives you a wide range of potential utility to society, as does your alt mode. Trucks form an important strut in the support structure of Cybertron.”

“Thank you sir,” Orion replies. He feels like he should take all of that as a compliment, but it is strange to have himself… cut apart and analysed like that. 

The taxonomist folds his servos in front of him. “You are something of a special case, Orion Pax.”

“Special?” Orion asks, surprised. “Why?”

“Your spark.”

“My… spark? Is there something unusual about my spark?” Orion has some idea, very vague, that there can be differences in the energies of the sparks that make a mech who they are. He didn’t think it had anything to do with one’s function. 

“At your age youngling I can’t imagine you will ever have seen a spark, even your own,” the taxonomist says. 

Orion can’t keep the wave of embarrassment out of his field or from dumping circuit heat into his lines. “N… no,” he stammers. 

“When a protoform extrudes however, they are quite visible. Yours was noted to be green. A ‘point one percenter’, to use the common parlance.”

Orion resets his optics. He  _ has _ heard that phrase. “But I’m nothing special,” he protests. 

“Your spark says differently,” the taxonomist tells him. “You have a great deal of potential. I imagine you will prove to excel in whatever field you choose to go into.”

“And what… um. What are my choices?” Orion asks. He resists the urge to shift uncomfortably in his chair. 

“Law enforcement is one possibility; a keen mind and a certain degree of physical prowess would be valuable there. Equally your intelligence might as well be put to use in an archival position, as one must never discredit the importance of information, historical or current, to the smooth working of the state.” He taps his digits together, thinking. Perhaps he sees the trepidation in Orion’s faceplates. 

“It just sounds like a lot of responsibility,” Orion says, feeling the need to justify himself. 

“I suppose you are still fresh out of the ground,” the taxonomist says with a thin smile. “If you perhaps wanted something just to get your dentae into, to develop your skills and self-confidence, shall we say, then something more… managerial might just do. A basic position overseeing something not too complicated.”

“Yes, that,” Orion says. This seems safer ground. 

The taxonomist reaches into his subspace and produces a datachip. “Tetracorp Holdings are always looking for good quality overseers. I suggest you make enquiries there.”

“Thank you sir,” Orion says. He is glad to be able to leave. Something about the look in the taxonomist’s optics troubled him, but it isn’t anything that he can put a digit on. It was just… strange. Uncomfortable. 

But he has a job! Or at least, he knows where to go to get one. Orion smiles, holding the datachip to his chest. It feels… good. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Orion and D-16 have both found their places in the grand machine that is Cybertron. They are starting to learn what that means.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This little pet project will continue to update very sporadically, but I hope folks enjoy it anyway.

Orion is feeling optimistic. This is his first day at his new job, and the thrill of excitement and anticipation is making his spark whirl faster in its chamber. The docks are busy with bots hard at work even this early in the megacycle and he gets several curious looks as he heads towards the Tetracorp warehouse. Massive cargo pallets and containers sit in stacks in the yard outside, but the path between them is obvious. Now he can detect the scent of the Rust Sea in his olfactory sensors, even as far up the canals as they are. The breeze brings it blowing strong towards the city. 

Orion has done his research, in preparation to start on here. The Rust Sea is a wide flat depression that covers a large part of one of Cybertron’s continental plates, and contains the planet’s largest concentration of dihydrogen monoxide, a dangerous corrosive, as well as numerous soluble mineral elements and trace metals. Unpleasant as the substance is, heat coming up from the core keeps it at just above 273 Kelvin, a temperature at which it is liquid. This means that large cargo vessels can traverse it more easily than attempting a crossing any other way, bringing goods and materials from Kaon, Tarn, Uraya, Altihex, Vos, Stanix and most importantly, the Hydrax Plateau Space Port. Working here, Orion will be a small cog in the vast network of logistics which keeps Cybertron running. He will be a part of the great machine, and thus he will be productive. He will have worth.

“Orion Pax?” He has met the femme now approaching him before. She was the one who interviewed him for the overseer position - her name is Requiem, a mid-caste utility frame like him, and she has ultimate authority over all of Tetracorp’s holdings at the Iacon docks. Her managerial position is the height of what he might aspire to, if he takes to this career. That’s what the taxonomist told him, at least. 

“Good morning Manager Requiem,” he says. “It’s good to see you. I hope you’re well?”

She laughs. “So polite Orion! Oh, don’t think I’m making fun. It’s a good quality for a bot like you to have.” She takes him by the arm, their fields brushing in a warm, pleasant buzz, and starts to lead him towards the warehouse itself. “You’re permitted to call me just Requiem though, so long as it’s not in front of the workers. Now, there’s still a few things to cover before you begin your first shift,” she says. “You did find appropriate accommodation nearby, didn’t you?”

“Yes Requiem,” Orion says, a little amazed at the boldness of failing to use her title. The room he is renting out is…  _ expensive _ . More than half his shanix each decacycle will go towards it, but it was all that he was able to find in the middle-caste zoning areas. Not that it is so very much cheaper even in the low-caste areas, and he would frankly be more than a bit afraid to venture there alone even if living there was permitted to him. 

“Very good,” Requiem says. “Now, to your role in our little logistical family here.” She laughs, a sound like tinkling glass. “You’re assigned to second shift, 25 cycles with a cycle overlap with first and third shift either side. There are two overseers to each shift - you’ll meet your workmate shortly. Her name is Ariel, and she is new as well! Isn’t that wonderful?”

“I look forward to meeting her,” Orion says, since something seems to be expected of him. 

“You two manage all orders coming in and out, make sure the cargo ships are loaded and unloaded to schedule, manage any little issues that might come up,” Requiem tells him. “You take and log calls on behalf of the Company - no need to worry whether we can take on the work! Tetracorp aims to please all customers, and I will of course sort out where the orders fit into our busy schedule. What else… oh! Maintenance! The ships need frequent anti-corrosive treatment. The labourers apply it, naturally, but the appropriate timeline to maintain peak efficiency is in the servos of you two, the mechs on the ground so to speak.”

Orion nods. It is much as his research suggested. 

Requiem leads him on a brief tour, showing him where the Tetracorp ships divert out of the main canal, where the dry-docks are for maintenance, introduces him to the rather arcane stockyard system, where his office is, and finally finishes up at her own office up at the top of the warehouse, hanging just below the roofline with views out over the docks and the interior both. 

There is a mech sitting on a chair outside the office, tapping her digits in a nervous pattern on her thigh plating though her field is kept tight and polite enough not to be broadcasting that emotion. She is primarily pink with white highlights, a few tones off the colour of energon. Orion isn’t a Spectralist, but he has some vague idea that the colours are associated with vitality and positive energy. Her most notable feature is a high helm crest - possibly housing enhanced processor functions or an improved sensory suite similar to the one linked to his own oversized audials. 

“Manager Requiem,” she says, standing as they approach up the walkway stairs. 

“Ariel!” Requiem smiles. “Thank you for waiting. This is Orion Pax. He’s starting here on the second shift with you.” It occurs to Orion to wonder what happened to the last two second-shift overseers, but it seems rude to ask that now. Requiem brings them both into her office. “A few last things to give you,” she says, going over to a cupboard. She hands them both a datapad each with the Tetracorp logo on the reverse. “These will allow you to access the appropriate proprietary databases.” Then she brings out two coils of what Orion thinks at first is heavy-duty wire. He accepts it from her, puzzled as to its purpose, and then nearly drops it when he sees that it’s an electrowhip.

“Manager,” Ariel asks, taking her own whip gingerly. “Why do we need these?”

Requiem takes a seat behind her desk and folds her servos in front of her. “I hope you  _ won’t _ need them,” she says. “The Company supplies these for your own protection.”

“Protection?” Orion says. “Against what?”

Requiem lets out a deep vent. “You must have been taught about low-caste frametypes,” she says. “Now, most of them are perfectly good workers and know their place in society admirably. There is of course turn-over in this industry, like any other, and sometimes the Company will end up hiring those who are less… appreciative of what needs to be done to earn honest shanix. There have been incidents in the past.”

She pauses, looking troubled. “Besides that, there have been a few issues with criminals,  _ undesirables _ , in the last few vorn. The functionless cluster near low-caste areas, including where our own workforce live, and sometimes they come around begging for work, shanix, energon, what-have-you. I… I am obliged to tell you that there was even a murder not too long ago.”

Orion’s spark sinks. Although he and other new-forged had access to news datafeeds in the creche, they were mostly insulated from the darker side of the real world. He knows, intellectually, that crime is a genuine danger. That bad things happen. That many bots - mostly lower-caste, but occasionally even middle and high-caste - reject their function and place in society because of some glitch in their processor or malignancy in their spark. It is different however to hear about death so close. 

“The mech that was killed… he was one of the overseers the pair of you are replacing,” Requiem says, answering Orion’s previous, unspoken question. “An empuratee broke in looking for fuel. An utterly feral, unredeemable bot - well, given how he already been punished it’s clear he was the worst kind of mech.” 

Orion looks down at the electrowhip in his servos, suddenly very thankful to have it. Empurata is… the ultimate punishment, aside from the death penalty. Only bots who have done truly terrible things are put through it; murderers, terrorists, rapists, organised criminals… That is what he was told by his mentor at the creche. 

“We’ll be careful,” Ariel promises. 

“If you see anything concerning, come to me immediately,” Requiem says. “For the most part this job is safe, but there is always the possibility…” 

Orion nods. He understands. The electrowhip magnetises to his hip plating where he can grab it quickly if needed. He hopes he never has to use it… 

“Try not to worry,” Requiem says, smiling. “Go, enjoy your first shift of work!”

\----

The stranger, now friend, named Terminus leads him through tight, dark tunnels until they finally emerge into a larger hall, one which teems with other low-caste frames. There is a slight glow of illumination here, enough to cause D-16 some discomfort as his optics refocus and adjust to it after so long relying on other parts of his sensor suite. It seems to emanate primarily from several large tanks at the far end of the room, each part-full of bright pink energon. D-16’s tank grumbles at the mere sight - his levels are low after the shift’s activity, burning through what had been left from the factory after the long stasis of space. He stumbles after Terminus, unable to concentrate on motion when his attention is so taken up by fuel. 

The frames which surround him are not all the same. Some look like he does; same alt, same basic shape of plating and helm, same yellow optics, perhaps the only difference in their colours and markings. Others are larger, or smaller - though still heavy duty - with different alt modes designed for different functions within the mine. His processor pulls up knowledge from the data-dump, feeding him categories, showing him how the mechs around him slot into the larger shape of the world. Although at first this room appeared chaotic, now D-16 perceives that there is order to it. The miners are forming lines, shuffling up towards the tanks. Hungry as he is, his turn will come if he is patient. 

“Stay close,” Terminus tells him. “Wouldn’t want to lose you in the crowd.”

No - then he might not be able to find a place to recharge before next shift, D-16 thinks. He does as he is instructed. He does not grow bored with the waiting, not when there is so much to see, so many new sights for his processor to pick over, so many other electromagnetic fields brushing against his own. Eventually though, they make it up to the dispensary. 

“Did you get an ID tag yet?” Terminus asks.

“I’m not sure,” D-16 has to admit. “What would it look like?”

Terminus looks him over, and then points to a place on his plating at his wrist. “They’ve stuck it on there,” he says. “Just give it a swipe under the reader, so it knows how much energon to give you.”

D-16 examines the small, raised area. It does not strike him as new, as an unfamiliar part of him, which suggests that it was applied at the factory before his spark was even kindled into his frame. He was, after all, constructed for this mine. He waves it beneath the energon dispenser and a small cube extrudes out. He grabs it, and follows Terminus away again, his friend bearing a cube of his own. 

“How much is this?” D-16 asks, examining his cube more carefully. Visually it appears to be about a deciliter, which will fill his tanks only a quarter. That seems… inefficient. In _ sufficient _ . 

“Shanix or volume?” Terminus asks him. 

“Both?” D-16 says, unsure exactly what the question means. 

“It’s enough to keep you going through another shift, if you’re not over-enthusiastic. Tastes like slag, but what can you expect from the dregs of the mine.” Terminus punctures the corner of his cube with one digit and takes a gulp. His field feels suddenly flat and tired, a stark contrast to the warm friendly sensation D-16 has been picking up before now. He wonders why. “As to shanix, twenty, which is half your pay for this megacycle’s work. The berth is going to be another ten - goes straight to the company, not to me,” he adds. 

Several questions queue themselves up in D-16’s processor. “Dregs?” he asks first. 

“The leftovers from refining the energon we dig up,” Terminus explains. “Most of it goes into mid-grade, some will be distilled into high-grade, though not here. What’s left is for fueling us. You should get started on that, by the way.” He points to the cube that D-16 had almost forgotten he was holding. He looks down, then copies what Terminus had done to open the containment field. 

Terminus had said it tastes bad, and the flavour is mostly chalky and bitter, but D-16 has nothing to compare it to. “How do you know it isn’t meant to taste like this?” he asks, swallowing. His tanks relax slightly. “That this isn’t just what energon tastes like, I mean.”

“You’ll find that out yourself when you get surface time. You can buy mid-grade or even engex up there - not good engex, not that I’d know what the fancy stuff tastes like. It’s certainly not anything like the high-grade they made for the upper-caste, I’m certain of that from the chemistry of it. Even so, both mid-grade and engex taste Pit of a lot better than this stuff.”

“Is the taste really so important?” D-16 asks. He feels a little uneasy about the way Terminus is talking, and he isn’t sure why. 

“That all depends on your perspective, I suppose.” Terminus shrugs, and finishes the last of his cube. 

“And… the shanix. The cost, I mean,” D-16 says, taking in another mouthful. “If I’m charged for fuel and berth-space, and that leaves only ten shanix a megacycle left over, it seems like it’s going to take me… a very long time to pay off my debt to the company.”

“Yes,” Terminus says. “It does, doesn’t it.”

D-16 doesn’t really know what to say to that. He continues to follow Terminus back into the narrow network of unlit tunnels until finally they pass through a doorway into a small space, pushing aside a heavy metal-mesh curtain. D-16’s sensors sweep the room in a brief and rapid ping, mapping out two broad, flat shelves to his left and right, a few boxes placed with apparent care on the stone floor, and little else. 

“Not much, is it,” Terminus tells him, glow of his optics just enough to light his smile. 

“Should we need more?” D-16 asks him. The shelves appear to be places for them both to recharge, judging by their size and shape, and they appear adequate to their frames. There is some storage, but he has no possessions. Not even his new tools, left back at the active face of the mine. 

Terminus is still smiling, but D-16 feels that there is something off about his expression. He trawls through the data download, but finds nothing. The download does not indicate that anything else is amiss. His function is to work, and he expects to be given nothing more than what he requires to fulfil that. 

“Need? No,” Terminus says. “The question is whether we might  _ want _ something more.  _ Deserve _ something more.”

D-16 has nothing to say to this. The idea is a strange one, jarring up against what he already knows just like everything Terminus told him about the energon. He is too young, he thinks, to want anything. He wouldn’t even know  _ what _ to want. 

“Well,” Terminus says, after the silence has stretched for a klik. “We’re both going to need our recharge, but this might be the last chance we get to talk this megacycle. If there’s anything you want to know about life down here, ask away.”

D-16 considers. “The overseer mentioned at the start of shift that if I didn’t start work quickly, I’d end the day more in debt. I understand now about the expenses, but…”

“You don’t get paid if you don’t hit quota,” Terminus says. “Which is calculated based on the whole work-group mind you, not individually.”

“But we aren’t paid as a group,” D-16 says, frowning. “Right?”

“It’s supposed to discourage shirking,” Terminus tells him. “Or rather, it’s a little more complicated than that, but what the overseers will  _ say _ if you ask them is that it means the rest of your shift will have  _ words _ with you if you aren’t keeping up, and so are dragging them down. The overseers needn’t bother punishing you themselves when your fellow miners are doing it for them. It seems to work out for  _ them _ anyway.”

“I suppose I understand that,” D-16 says slowly. “I hope I didn’t drag anyone down this megacycle then.”

“You did fine. The quota will have changed now that you’ve been added to the shift numbers though, so we’ll have to check it with the overseer tomorrow.”

D-16 nods, feeling determined. He isn’t going to let anyone down. He’ll make sure his fellow mechs have no reason to dislike or scorn him. “Is there anything else you think I ought to know?” he asks. 

“Just to keep your helm down and be careful,” Terminus says. “The overseer we have right now, Flintlock, he’s not too bad. Some of the others though have a cruel streak to them. They can be heavy-servoed, and some of them will look for any reason to punish you. Be polite to them and don’t ask  _ them _ questions.”

“Why wouldn’t I be polite?” D-16 objects. They are mid-caste, and he is low-caste. He’s meant to give them respect, to obey their orders. He knows this is the way things work. 

“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Terminus says. “You should get some rest now. You’ll need every scrap of recharge you can get for the next shift.”

\----

“Are you coming out tonight Orion?” Ariel asks him. Orion checks his credit balance on his pad and winces internally. 

“Sorry Ariel,” he says. “I don’t think I can afford it.”

She frowns at him. “We just got paid last decacyle. Are you sure you can’t spare a few shanix - there’s a place I know that does good deals on engex, and it doesn’t even taste like cheap slag.”

“My rent is really eating up my pay,” Orion says, a little embarrassed to admit it, trying to keep that out of his field. “I’ve been trying to save a little bit each month in case I need it, but between that, and energon, and transportation…”

“Where are you living?” Ariel asks, curious now. This might have started as a simple offer, but one of the things he has learned about Ariel after working with her for a decacycle is that she loves to get her dentae into a mystery or a problem. She likes solving things - and Orion’s finances have just become one of those things.

“Theta district,” Orion replies, resigning himself to the interrogation. Besides that, perhaps he  _ is _ paying too much for rent, given the apparent discrepancy between what he and Ariel can afford. “It’s only a small apartment, but…”

“Well are you sharing with anyone?” 

Orion resets his optics, startled. “Is that an option?” he asks. 

Ariel vents out, field flaring with surprise and irritation, although not directed at him precisely. He’s thankful for that, because he likes Ariel very much, and would hate to think he had done something to upset her. “Of course it’s an option,” she says. “I guess it might not be the kind of thing your creche thought to mention though, which  _ I  _ think is silly given the whole point of a creche is to prepare you for life in the real world.”

“So, you’re sharing with someone then?” Orion asks. For some reason, he finds that he is very keen to know the answer to that question, and not just because if she isn’t, then he might have a chance of moving in with her. 

“One of the overseers from another shift,” Ariel explains. “His name’s Dion, although he’s been thinking about changing it.”

“I didn’t know that was something you could do either,” Orion says, a little plaintively. Ariel’s right - it does seem like his creche should have told him these things. 

“Well, I gather people don’t  _ like  _ it.” Ariel shrugs. Her field is a lot calmer now. “There’s a lot of bureaucracy to go through - some bots will say it implies a change of function, or at least a change in career path, but I think it could just as well mean that your caretakers didn’t anticipate everything about the adult you when they first gave you your designation, so…”

“That… makes sense.” Orion has never questioned the fitness of his own designation. He is happy with it, or at least, he thinks he is. Hmm. Perhaps he will have to spend some more processor time on that. 

“Anyway, you should probably start looking for a roommate,” Ariel says. “In fact, we do have room for a third. Bit of a tight squeeze perhaps, and we might have to start a rota to use the washrack, but three sharing is even cheaper than two so I would call that a win.”

Orion feels his plating warm as his circuits heat - although really, why should he feel embarrassed about it? Is it the thought of meeting Dion? He could do with more friends - he’s been to the local bar several times with a firm plan to sit down and speak to someone, but has had difficulty getting up the courage to do so. Making friends that aren’t his crechemates has been more daunting than he anticipated. He tries to keep his all of this out of his field and under control. 

“Shouldn’t you ask Dion first before making an offer like that?” he asks. 

“Dion is a very easy-going sort of mech,” Ariel replies, waving his concern away with a servo. “I’m going to see him at the bar tonight, so I’ll make sure he’s okay with it. You give it some thought, okay? And maybe think about all the fun you could be having with a little more shanix to go around!”

“I will,” Orion says. “Think about it, I mean. See you tomorrow?”

“I don’t need an answer that soon,” Ariel says, field flashing with humour. “Just let me know whenever.” She whirls round and leaves him still hot under his plating, feeling a little awkward in comparison to her easy grace. Even so, Orion has a good feeling about this, and he doubts he will need much time to consider her offer. 

\----

Megacycles pass quickly in the mine. The work is relentless, constant and wearying, and D-16 falls into recharge within astroseconds at the end of each shift. He becomes familiar with an ache deep in his frame that never entirely passes despite resting, the discomfort of repair nanites always busy. At first he wonders if this is abnormal, if there was some issue with his construction at the factory and he is not entirely fit for purpose, but Terminus assures him that everyone feels that way. It is simply the way things are.

D-16 gets to know the rest of his shift-mates as well, in little snatches of conversation sent over radio between the thud and crash of breaking rock and pounding machinery. They have all been here long enough to have thought of designations for themselves to replace the simple ident codes given to them by the factories that made them. Steelplate is the oldest, one of the very first batches of cold-constructed mechs from when the technique was perfected for mass production, followed by Terminus. The most talkative is Impactor, who particularly enjoys the fact that there is a new mech amongst them who hasn’t yet heard all of his tales. The subject matter seems to be either gossip about the overseers, the marvels of rec-time above ground, or the mythology of the earliest days of Cybertron. D-16 has no idea where he heard those particular stories, which are remarkably absent from the data download  _ he  _ received. He knows very little of history at all in fact, and he dislikes that lack. Is there somewhere he could go to learn more? Not that he minds Impactor’s tales, or seeing Impactor smile with pleasure when he asks to hear another, but… it is a lack. Something missing from the data download, which implies that perhaps there could be other things missing too. 

That is a disquieting thought.

Even if there was such a place to hear about history, D-16 doesn’t know when he would be able to go there. He has not yet earned any time off above ground - every cycle he is either working or recharging.

The final three members rounding out their work crew are Crusher, Lodestone and Powerlift, who are all friendly enough with him, but in a more distant way. They will nod along to Impactor’s stories and tell anecdotes of their own, add their perspectives to the latest bits of gossip that circulate from work-group to work-group in the energon lines at shift end, but they don’t seem to take the initiative in conversation. Their radio frequencies stay quiet more often than not, helms down, focused on the picks and power hammers their servos wield with practised skill. 

“Some bots just don’t have a lot of energy to spare,” Terminus tells him with a shrug, when he asks. “Don’t think any worse of them for it will you?”

“Of course not,” D-16 assures him. 

All told D-16 would say, if asked, that he is happy. He has friends, and the physicality of turning rock to rubble in the search for the pink-hued crystals of energon ore is satisfying even as it makes his frame ache. His tanks grumble sometimes at constantly sitting somewhere between a half and quarter full, but he isn’t redlining, and Terminus tells him his systems will adapt. They are meeting their quotas. There isn’t any reason to be anything other than happy. 

About half a vorn passes before D-16 sees his first serious accident. There have been minor incidents before now of course, rockfalls and gas pockets and malfunctions in the mining equipment they use, but all of them have been constructed with thick plating and shielded vents and heavy-strutted frames. Dents pop out, and small wounds heal over from self-repair in a decacycle or two, so he didn’t think there was anything to be concerned about. Equipment is taken away to be serviced - if the malfunction is severe enough - or a few extra support beams are welded into place, and then they continue on down the vein of ore they have been following. 

This is different. D-16 feels it first, a tremor under his pedes and up through his struts. The rough-cut walls around them seem to shudder. He drops his pick and turns to move, to do something, but it is already too late. His sensors fill with the roar of crumbling stone, gyroscope tumbling momentarily and dizzyingly. When the moment of stunned confusion is over, pressure crushes down on every scrap of plating along his back. He is lying down… no. He is in alt, rock covering his roof and flanks. He must have transformed instinctively. He is pinned, but he can still move slightly, rock back and forth on his treads. He runs an internal scan of his frame, looking for damage. 

It seems that he is lucky, because there is surprisingly little of it. Dented and warped plating in a number of places, but most of it is only cosmetic. A few energon lines have been strained enough to spring small leaks, but self-repair should close those up before the loss is enough to be concerning. No, the largest issue is that he appears to be trapped. 

D-16 tries his comms, sending out a radio ping hoping one of his team will pick it up. The signal bounces off the rock all around him, sending back ghosts of his own call. He can’t be sure any of that got through. He tries again, strengthening it in intensity, then listens. Nothing. No reply. 

He is not a mech given to panic. This is a difficult problem, but that doesn’t mean he can do nothing to solve it. He tries to transform and manages to get halfway through it before the stone overhead shifts dangerously, groaning, tiny pebbles bouncing off his plating. D-16 goes still, holding his shape despite the discomfort of being neither in root or alt. He has pushed some of the looser rocks out of the way slightly, and it feels as though there is a little more room around him now. He shifts slowly back into alt, tries to use his bulk to compress the walls of this tiny space, and transforms again. Repeating this, he manages to make a hole for himself where he can safely be in root mode again, although he must remain hunched over on all fours. Still, it’s enough for him to try something else. 

D-16 reaches up to his helm and lifts the exterior cover off. From beneath, sensor panels fan out, a sudden shock of sensation hitting his neural net as they do and making him shudder all over. He hasn’t done this before. It had never been necessary. However the data download he was given has told him the reason he was constructed with these parts, and it is for just such an occasion as this. With this extra sensor capacity, he should be able to hear if there is anyone else moving around down here, and perhaps dig towards them. 

Tuning his processor in to the new information, D-16 realises that he can hear a voice, dim and muffled.

“Unicron’s murky energon, this is a mess.” A voice he recognises. Their overseer, Flintlock. He isn’t usually up at the rock face with them, watching from further back where his mid-caste frame’s vents won’t be so affected by the dust and particulates. Far enough away that he must have escaped the collapse. Then D-16 picks up a transmission, something Flintlock is sending that he would never previously have sensed with his panels covered. 

_ [Reporting a serious collapse in Rho sector, tunnel 8372. Entire work-team buried. Tunnel impassable.] _

After a few astroseconds there is a reply, although the angle of the signal means he cannot make all of it out. He thinks it asked if the workers were all offline.

_ [Sir, there’s no way to tell _ . _ ]  _ Flintlock says.  _ [They’re heavy frames. Some might not be.] _

_ [...need tunnel anyway…] _ D-16 catches.  _ [...dig team… wait…] _

There is someone coming for them. Rescue is on its way. D-16 settles down beneath the remains of the tunnel and relaxes, letting go of a degree of worry he hadn’t been fully aware of. He could try to help by digging his own way out - he has a direction now thanks to Flintlock, but given the way the stone was threatening to shift while he transformed he could actually make things worse. Better to let the experts handle this. 

Time passes. A long time - and that makes him start to worry again. Had the rescue crew gotten held up by something? Is there some kind of problem out there? It makes D-16 start to rethink his decision to stay put, but each time the doubt and worry starts up he reminds himself that he has never been in a situation like this before. He should trust Flintlock, and the mine manager he was talking to, to know what is best here. 

Eventually he starts to hear the sound of digging. Finally. Finally. He listens to it come closer and closer, until the noise of it is near enough and thus painful enough that he has to retract his sensor panels and tuck them away beneath his helm again. Then a soft optic glow bursts through into the small space he has been crouching in, and strong servos pull him free from the rubble. He is patted down, checked over, and gently pushed away from where the diggers are working. 

“Well at least we got one,” Flintlock says to him, in a half unthinking kind of way. “Makes up for something.” His field shows anger, anxiety, worry. It should be comforting to know they both feel the same way, but… it isn’t. 

“I’m sure I won’t be the only one,” D-16 says with heat, trying not to let himself believe his own creeping doubt. He hadn’t detected any distress pings aside from his own. Hadn’t heard any other movement. 

“I hope we do,” Flintlock says. “The cost to the company of this mess…” He shakes his helm, looking deeply unhappy. D-16 turns his attention back to the wall of rocks and boulders that is gradually being broken down and carried away. There are frequent pauses to fix supports and shore up the ceiling. Then there is a cry, and two more frames are dragged out, covered in dirt and dust. 

“I’m fine, I’m fine, get your damn servos off me!” The voice is Impactor’s. D-16 feels his spark pulse with relief, and pushes as close as anyone will let him to try and see who the other mech is. Terminus. It’s Terminus. The relief only doubles, a great wave of it that churns through his system and nearly makes his knees give out as all his cables and hydraulics suddenly relax. The two of them are given the same rapid check over, and pushed gently but firmly out of the way, up towards D-16. 

“You’re both still alive,” D-16 says quietly to them, grabbing on to whatever free bit of plating he can, drawing them close. “I’m so glad… I didn’t know…”

“Takes more than that to get rid of us,” Terminus says, smiling, trying to be reassuring with his voice and his field. He can’t quite suppress the fear that pulses through it though when he looks back to the blank mess of stone where the rest of their friends are still trapped. 

Again they have to wait. Again, it is slow going. Then, all of a sudden, even slower. The bots digging mutter amongst themselves, lifting away tumbled rocks from one particular area of the fall, concentrating their efforts. From somewhere beneath the stone there comes a thin cry of pain. D-16 starts forwards, but Terminus holds him back. “It’ll go quicker if we don’t get in their way,” he says. 

It looks like Steelplate, Lodestone, Crusher and Powerlift were all caught together by the collapse, pinned in a tangle of limbs which is gradually uncovered. There is movement, so D-16 presumes they are all online - or at least he does until Powerlift is hoisted up and out still and silent with half his plating stained with energon. One of the mining picks is wedged deep into the cables and lines of his neck, piercing down behind his chest cavity. In the very dim light, it is possible to see that his frame is starting to go grey. 

D-16 stands there quietly, his processor whirling and going nowhere, without any concrete thoughts at all. There is a sharp, sudden emptiness in his spark, and he doesn’t know how to react. 

Crusher and Steelplate are helped out onto their pedes functioning though, and they all work together to pull Lodestone out last. One of his legs has been twisted and buckled, and is barely hanging on to the rest of his frame. He can only just manage to balance on his uninjured pede with assistance. 

“Frag,” Flintlock says quietly next to them. Frustration joins the other emotions whirling in his field. Louder, he calls, “Take him off to the medics and get that looked at. See if it’s worth fixing.”

“Worth fixing?” D-16 says, after an astrosecond passes and the words sink in. “What do you mean…?”

“Shut it,” Flintlock says, the first time he has given D-16 an order and sounded angry about it. D-16 bites back his question in a wave of instinctual shame. “All of you, go back to your berths. It’ll take the rest of the shift to get this cleared anyway, and… well… I can give you that much at least.”

Terminus nods, and those of them who can, walk away. 

“What did he mean, worth fixing?” D-16 asks, once they are far enough away that he’s sure they will not be overheard. 

“He means whether it would cost more to fix Lodestone than they think they’re likely to get back out of him in productivity,” Impactor growls, before anyone else can say anything. “Fraggers.”

“But… but if they refuse to fix him…”

“Then he can’t work, which means he won’t be given fuel,” Terminus says, completing a thought D-16 had only half realised. “But it’s just one limb, and Lodestone isn’t that old. They ought to fix him.”

Impactor snorts. “Yeah. At what cost?” 


End file.
